IAI RESEARCH PAPERS
Edited by Riccardo Alcaro
W EST -R USSIA
R ELATIONS IN L IGHT
OF THE U KRAINE C RISIS
WEST-RUSSIA RELATIONSIN LIGHTOFTHE UKRAINE CRISIS EDITEDBY RICCARDO ALCARO
The IAI Research Papers are brief monographs written by one or more authors (IAI or external experts) on current problems of inter- national politics and international relations. The aim is to promote greater and more up to date knowledge of emerging issues and trends and help prompt public debate.
The Institute aims to promote understanding of international politics through research, promotion of political ideas and strategies, disse- IAI main research sectors are: European institutions and policies;
Italian foreign policy; trends in the global economy and internationa- lisation processes in Italy; the Mediterranean and the Middle East;
defence economy and policy; and transatlantic relations.
In light of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and destabilization of Ukraine, West-Russia relations have so dramatically deteriorated that talk of a new Cold War has become routine. NATO’s role in Europe is again in the spotlight, with experts and policymakers pondering whether the Alliance needs to go back to its historical roots and re-calibrate itself as an instrument of defence from and containment of Russia. At the same time, cooperation between Russia and the West has not collapsed altogether, with the two still able to coordinate on issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme. Clearly, tensions over Ukraine are so strong that the risk of a breakdown in relations cannot be ruled out. The contributions to this volume, the result of an international Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, analyze the dramatic shift in Europe’s strategic context and explore the question of whether Russia and the West can contain tensions, manage competition, and keep cooperating on issues of mutual concern.
RICCARDO ALCARO is Senior Fellow in the Transatlantic Programme, and Internazionali (IAI). In 2014 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) of the Brookings Institution, Washington.
IAI Research Papers
N. 1 European Security and the Future of Transatlantic Relations, edited by Riccardo Alcaro and Erik Jones, 2011
N. 2 Democracy in the EU after the Lisbon Treaty, 2011
N. 3 The Challenges of State Sustainability in the Mediterranean, edited by Silvia Colombo and Nathalie Tocci, 2011
N. 4 Re-thinking Western Policies in Light of the Arab Uprisings, edited by Riccardo Alcaro and Miguel Haubrich-Seco, 2012
N. 5 The transformation of the armed forces: the Forza NEC program, edited by Michele Nones and Alessandro Marrone, 2012
N. 6 Strengthening the Africa-EU Partnership on Peace and Security, edited by Nicoletta Pirozzi, 2012
N. 7 Stop Mass Atrocities, edited by Luis Peral and Nicoletta Pirozzi, 2013 N. 8 The Uneasy Balance, edited by Riccardo Alcaro and Andrea Dessì, 2013 N. 9 Global Turkey in Europe, Edited by Senem Aydın-Düzgit, Anne Duncker,
Daniela Huber, E. Fuat Keyman and Nathalie Tocci, 2013
N. 10 Italy and Saudi Arabia confronting the challenges of the XXI century, edited by Silvia Colombo, 2013
N. 11 The Italian Civil Security System, Federica Di Camillo, Alessandro Marrone, Stefano Silvestri, Paola Tessari, Alessandro R. Ungaro, 2014
N. 12 Transatlantic Security from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa, edited by Riccardo Alcaro and Nicoletta Pirozzi, 2014
N. 13 Global Turkey in Europe II, edited by Senem Aydın-Düzgit, Daniela Huber, Meltem Müftüler-Baç, E. Fuat Keyman, Jan Tasci and Nathalie Tocci, 2014 N. 14 Bridging the Gulf: EU - GCC Relations at a Crossroads, edited by Silvia
Colombo, 2014
N. 15 Imagining Europe, edited by Nathalie Tocci, 2014
N. 16 The Role of Italian Fighter Aircraft in Crisis Management Operations: Trends and Needs, Vincenzo Camporini, Tommaso De Zan, Alessandro Marrone, Michele Nones, Alessandro R. Ungaro, 2014
N. 17 In Search of a New Equilibrium. Economic Imbalances in the Eurozone Paolo Canofari, Piero Esposito, Marcello Messori, Carlo Milani Edited by Marcello Messori, 2015
N. 18 West-Russia Relations in Light of the Ukraine Crisis, edited by Riccardo Alcaro, 2015
COP_ 97888681
s
IAI Research Papers
West-Russia Relations in Light of the Ukraine Crisis
Edited by Riccardo Alcaro
Edizioni Nuova Cultura
Acknowledgements
This volume is the follow-up of an international conference on West-Russia relations jointly organised by the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) of the Brookings Institution. It has been made possible thanks to the generous support from Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Coop- eration, NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, the Compagnia di San Paolo and the Frie- drich Ebert Stiftung.
Series Editor Natalino Ronzitti
_________________________
First published 2015 by Edizioni Nuova Cultura For Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI)
Via Angelo Brunetti 9 - I-00186 Roma www.iai.it
Copyright © 2015 Edizioni Nuova Cultura - Roma ISBN: 9788868124649
Cover: by Tiziano Fani Braga
Graphic Composition: by Luca Mozzicarelli
The unauthorized reproduction of this book, even partial, carried out by any means, including photocopying, even for internal or didactic use, is prohibited by copyright.
List of Contributors ... 7
List of Abbreviations ... 9
Introduction ... 11
1. Dancing with the Bear. How the West Should Handle Its Relations with Russia, Ivan Krastev ... 17
1.1. Russia’s Place in the European Order ... 17
1.2. Russia’s Challenge and Europe’s Options ... 19
1.3. Russia’s Revolt against Globalisation ... 20
1.4. Sanctions and the Paradox of Russia’s Isolationism ... 24
1.5. Dancing with the Bear ... 28
2. Deterrence in the New European Security Context, Christopher Chivvis ... 33
2.1. The New Conflict with Russia ... 33
2.2. Geopolitical and Ideological Drivers of Conflict ... 36
2.3. The Danger to the Baltic States and NATO ... 39
2.4. Deterrence and Engagement ... 41
2.5. Strategic Principles ... 45
3. West-Russia Relations and the Emerging Global Order. Polycentric World as the New Reality, Alexey Gromyko ... 49
3.1. The Role and Place of Russia in Europe and Eurasia ... 49
3.2. The Role and Place of Russia in the Polycentric World ... 51
3.3. The Role and Place of Russia in the Changing Configuration of Power ... 54
3.4. Smaller Europe (the EU), Russia and the US: Strategies of Geopolitical Survival ... 57
Appendix A. Report of the Transatlantic Security Symposium 2014,
Riccardo Alcaro ... 65
The Conference ... 65
Russia’s Interests and Putin’s Power ... 65
Putin’s Russia vs. the West ... 67
Russia’s Place in the World ... 68
A Bipolar Europe ... 69
NATO and Russia ... 70
Ukraine’s Grim Outlook ... 72
Conclusions ... 72
Appendix B. Agenda of the Transatlantic Security Symposium 2014 ... 75
Appendix C. List of Participants in the Transatlantic Security Symposium 2014 ... 79
Bibliography ... 83
RICCARDO ALCARO is Senior Fellow in the Transatlantic Programme, and Project Manager of the Transatlantic Security Symposium, Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI). In 2014 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) of the Brookings Institution, Washington.
CHRISTOPHER CHIVVIS is Senior Political Scientist, RAND, Arlington.
ALEXEY GROMYKO is Director, Institute of Europe, Moscow.
IVAN KRASTEV is Board Member, European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa
CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy (EU)
CSCE Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe
CSDP Common Security and Defence Policy (EU)
CSTO Cooperative Security Treaty Organisation
EaP Eastern Partnership (EU)
EEU Eurasian Economic Union
EBRD European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
EU European Union
G8 Group of Eight
G20 Group of Twenty
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDR German Democratic Republic
IMF International Monetary Fund
ISIS Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham
KGB Committee for State Security
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
OSCE Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
PPP Purchasing Power Parity
SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
START Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
UK United Kingdom
UNDESA United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
UNGA United Nations General Assembly
UNSC United Nations Security Council
US United States
WTO World Trade Organisation
WWI First World War
WWII Second World War
When he took office in early 2009, President Barack Obama made im- provement of the United States’ relations with Russia – the so-called
“reset” policy – one of his signature foreign policy initiatives. That hope lies now in tatters, shattered by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and de- stabilisation of south-eastern Ukraine. The goal of turning US-Russia co- operation – and, by extension, West-Russia cooperation – into a building block of international governance looks now as distant as it was during the Cold War. The best one can hope instead is that relations between Moscow and Western capitals do not further deteriorate to the point of a complete breakdown.
The rationale for the “reset” policy was the pragmatic recognition that the recurring tensions with Russia – prompted by issues ranging from Kosovo’s independence to the US plan to install a ballistic missile defence system in Eastern Europe and Georgia’s and Ukraine’s prospec- tive membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – were thwarting US and Western interests in Afghanistan and the man- agement of Iran’s nuclear issue as well as creating new fault lines on the European continent. Tellingly, after reaching a low point in relations in the wake of Russia’s short and victorious war against Georgia in August 2008, both Russia and Western powers took steps to avoid a scenario of full confrontation. Several member states of the European Union (EU), particularly Western European countries with little memory of recent Soviet domination, viewed the new US course as being more in keeping with their interest in establishing a constructive relationship with Rus- sia, a key player on the European stage and the Union’s main energy provider. While some EU member states, particularly in Eastern Europe, felt the United States was too prone to seek cooperation with an unreli- able Russian government, the whole European Union eventually signed
off on Obama’s policy. The election of Dmitry Medvedev as Russia’s president, who depicted himself as more liberal-minded than his patron and predecessor, Vladimir Putin, had in fact helped create an atmos- phere more forthcoming for dialogue and cooperation.
The “reset” policy did produce some important results, most notably the US-Russian agreement on the reduction of strategic nuclear weap- ons known as the New START (the only relevant nuclear disarmament agreement struck in twenty years); Russia’s greater cooperation on curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, particularly thanks to its agreeing to tough sanctions against Tehran in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in June 2010; and Russia’s agreement to let key military sup- plies for the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan transit its airspace, an important development given the growing difficulty NATO was experi- encing in keeping open its supply lines through Pakistan.
While significant, these achievements did not pave the way for what many had hoped the “reset” policy would eventually produce: a re- newed West-Russia relationship based on mutual respect and coopera- tion on issues of common concern. In fact, relations between the West and Russia continued to be fraught with problems of mistrust, rhetorical competition, and fundamentally different views of how security issues should be managed internationally. In hindsight, the “reset” policy seems to have been just a lull in a process started in the early 2000s which has seen West-Russia relations steadily deteriorate. While none of the “reset” policy achievements has thus far been reversed, a succes- sion of events, including the re-election of Putin as Russia’s president in 2012 and culminating in Russia’s forced takeover of Crimea and destabi- lisation of Ukraine, have plunged the West-Russia relationship to its lowest point in twenty-five years.
For many in the West, the crisis over Ukraine has laid bare the most unsettling features of President Putin’s government: lack of any appre- ciation for political pluralism; readiness to dispense with opposition forces by de-legitimisation through state-controlled propaganda and possibly forceful repression; and resolve to defend what Putin perceives as Russia’s vital interests with any means, including the use of force, land grabs, and destabilising practices such as fomenting and directing pro-Russian nationalist protests in other countries.
Ukraine is a special case because influence over Kiev is of paramount importance to Russia’s security strategy and national pride. However, it should not be seen in isolation. It is part of a broader design by Presi- dent Putin to re-establish as much influence as possible over the former Soviet space. Central to this objective is Putin’s plan for a Eurasian Eco- nomic Union (EEU) including most of the former republics of the Soviet Union, be them in East Europe, the Caucasus or Central Asia. The prob- lem with the Eurasian Economic Union is that the Russian president sees it as incompatible with any significant form of integration of its members into Euro-Atlantic frameworks, notably NATO but also the Eu- ropean Union.
The crisis in Ukraine has also made it clear that the West is now con- fronted with the problem of handling the revanchist instincts of a for- mer superpower. The West faces an intractable regime centred on the personal power of President Putin, who has increasingly tied his legiti- macy to a pledge to embody and defend an exceptionalist Russian iden- tity, mostly defined in opposition to Western values and norms. In other words, the conflict between the West and Russia is framed by Putin himself not only as a conflict of interests, but of identity too. This narra- tive has been used by Putin to rebut any sort of criticism coming from the West, be it directed at Russia’s takeover of Crimea or at Putin’s in- creasingly strict control over Russia’s media and marginalisation and repression of political dissent.
Signs of growing competition between the West and Russia were vis- ible long before unrest in Ukraine escalated into a full-blown crisis. The Arab uprisings are a case in point. From the start, Russia and the West have held different views of the cycle of revolutions and counter- revolutions which has engulfed the most part of the Arab world. While the United States and the European Union initially insisted on the anti- authoritarian and pro-democracy nature of popular protests, Russia has consistently seen the so-called Arab Spring as a bearer of instability and, more worryingly, as an opportunity for Islamic fundamentalism to find new ways to gain influence. Moscow opted for a cautious approach in the beginning, even letting the Security Council authorise the use of force to protect endangered civilians in the prolonged conflict between Libya’s longstanding ruler, Muammar Qaddafi, and a West-backed rebel
coalition. Russia came to regret its choice in a matter of months if not weeks, as it became clear that NATO’s intervention in defence of civil- ians rapidly “crept” into what the Russians perceived as an open policy of regime change by force. Bruised by the Libya case, Russia has ever since been adamant in refusing any form of UNSC support for rebels fighting against established rulers in the Arab world, irrespective of how brutal such rulers could be. This has been most evident in Syria, where Russia has steadfastly protected its ally Bashar al-Assad from any form of UN action.
West-Russia relations have so dramatically deteriorated that talk of a new Cold War has become routine. NATO’s role in Europe is again in the spotlight, with experts and policymakers alike pondering whether the Alliance needs to go back to its historical roots, re-calibrating itself as an instrument of defence from and containment of Russia. However, it is important to notice that cooperation has not collapsed altogether. Rus- sia has continued to be a committed member of the P5+1, the group of nations (including also the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and China plus the European Union) dealing with Iran’s nucle- ar dispute. It has also continued to assist NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan.
And it has agreed with the United States upon a plan for the removal of all chemical weapons from Syria, forcing the Assad regime to deliver.
Thus, while competition has increased in strategic areas – most nota- bly in the former Soviet space and the Middle East – the need for coop- eration has not vanished. Clearly, this is far from an ideal scenario. Ten- sions over Ukraine are so strong that the risk of a breakdown in rela- tions is certainly present. Yet neither party would benefit from it.
It was with the goal of exploring ways by which Russia and the West can contain tensions, manage competition, and keep cooperating on is- sues of mutual concern, that the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) of Rome and the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) at the Brookings Institution of Washington co-organised an international con- ference on West-Russia relations. The conference was the seventh edi- tion of the Transatlantic Security Symposium, the IAI-run annual forum in which experts from America, Europe and other countries convene to discuss the main topics in the transatlantic security agenda.
The event, sponsored by Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Interna-
tional Development, NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, the Compagnia di San Paolo, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Rome Office) and Unicredit Bank, saw the participation of over forty senior experts from think tanks and other institutions from a number of EU member states (France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and Bulgaria), the United States, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Russia took part. This volume col- lects a revised version of the papers that were presented at the event as well as a summary of the main points that were discussed.
(R.A.)
Dancing with the Bear.
How the West Should Handle Its Relations with Russia
Ivan Krastev
1.1 R
USSIA’
SP
LACE IN THEE
UROPEANO
RDERFor the past three hundred years Europe has played a central role in global affairs. Of course Europe was not everything. It was nonetheless at the centre of everything. In 1914 the European order was the world order. The interests, ambitions and rivalries of the European empires shaped world politics. The First World War (WWI) was also known as the European war. In 1919 it was the American President Woodrow Wilson who played the major role in the Paris talks over the post-war settlement, but his vision for re-ordering the world so as to achieve global peace was primarily an attempt to re-order Europe (Tooze 2014).
In the wake of the Second World War (WWII) two non-European pow- ers, the United States (US) and the Soviet Union, emerged as the global superpowers, but again the Cold War order was still a Europe-centred order because the future of Europe was the ultimate prize in the East- West contest and both democratic capitalism and communism were Eu- ropean-born ideologies.
In 1989-1991 we witnessed the emergence of a distinctly European model for international conduct that was based on a set of assumptions and practices radically different from the global order. In 1989 Chinese communist authorities crushed pro-democracy demonstrations in Bei- jing’s Tienanmen Square. By contrast, in Europe the ruling communists agreed to a peaceful transfer of power, thus rejecting the use of force as a legitimate political instrument. This choice to solve differences with-
out military intervention made Europe different from the rest of the world. “What came to an end in 1989,” wrote British diplomat Robert Cooper, summarising the new situation, “was not just the Cold War or even […] the Second World War. […] What came to an end in Europe (but perhaps only in Europe) were the political systems of three centu- ries: the balance of power and the imperial urge” (Cooper 2004:16).
The key elements of this new European order were a highly devel- oped system of mutual interference in each other’s domestic affairs as well as security based on openness and transparency in the context of the European Union (EU). The new post-modern security system did not rely on a balance of power; nor did it emphasise sovereignty or the sep- aration of domestic and foreign affairs. It rejected the use of force as an instrument for settling conflicts and promoted increased mutual de- pendence between European states. The post-modern European order was not interested in changing the borders of Europe or in creating new states (like after the WWI). It did not attempt to move people in order to secure these borders (like after WWII). After 1989 Europe’s ambition was to change the very nature of the borders, to open them for capital, people, goods and ideas. The political leadership of the old continent
“banned” themselves from thinking in terms of maps. Cartography was displaced by various economic graphs that documented the financial and commercial interdependence of Europe. Territorial divisions were replaced by economic integration.
The annexation of Crimea has made clear Russia’s rejection of this order. After 1989 it was the Soviet Union and not Russia that sought a place within the European model. For the late Soviet leaders the expan- sion of the European order of soft sovereignty and economic interde- pendence was the only way to protect their empire from the secession- ist drive of the various Soviet republics. Faced with the choice between post-modernity and disintegration former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorba- chev opted for post-modernism and co-signed the Paris Charter, thus subscribing to its vision for a common European home.
It was the Soviet Union and not Russia that tacitly agreed to Germa- ny’s re-unification, which was a de facto annexation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which ceased to exist, by its larger and im- mensely wealthier western neighbour. But Gorbachev’s attempt to save
the Soviet Union by joining the Western world failed. And unlike the So- viet Union, post-Soviet Russia was a separatist project, which explains Moscow’s strong defence of sovereignty. Russia’s understanding of sov- ereignty is a rather narrow one, according to which sovereignty is not so much a right as a consequence of power. Only great powers can be really sovereign. Sovereignty does not mean a seat in the United Nations Gen- eral Assembly (UNGA). It implies economic independence, military strength and cultural identity.
Russia’s foreign policy in the first two decades after the end of the Cold War was a strange mix of conservatism and resentment. Russia was a pro-status quo power because it valued its position as a successor of one of the Cold War superpowers, as attested to by its keeping a per- manent seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). But at the same time it was resentful about the fact that the post-Cold War Euro- pean order was anchored in Western institutions like the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union. In the 21st centu- ry Russia was in a constant search of a new European order. In this sense the Kremlin’s violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine did not mark the beginning of the crisis of post-Cold War European order but the final stage of a long process during which Russia grudgingly tol- erated an order which it felt was not advantageous for its interests.
1.2 R
USSIA’
SC
HALLENGE ANDE
UROPE’
SO
PTIONS The question now is: what should Europe do in the face of Russia’s re- jection of the post-Cold War order? How should Europe react to the at- tack on its principles and model?In reality, most of the world has never accepted this new European order, even if Europeans saw this approach as universally applicable.
Robert Kagan famously described Europeans as Venusians faced by a world of Martians (Kagan 2003).
The crisis in Ukraine has revealed that many non-Western powers are uninterested in investing in the preservation of Europe’s post- modern order. Brazil, China, India, and South Africa have not joined the efforts of the West to punish Russia, with which they have formed the
most important non-Western grouping of countries, the BRICS. They ab- stained in a UNGA vote to sanction Moscow’s conduct. China actually used the standoff between Russia and the West as an opportunity to close some big commercial deals with the Russians. For China and the other non-Western powers the crisis in Ukraine is a local European cri- sis, not a global one. They see the European order as a distinctive re- gional settlement based on principles and norms different than the ones that regulate the global order.
In short, Russia’s annexation of Crimea made Europeans suddenly re- alise that the EU political model may be good (even exceptionally good) at containing and overcoming interstate conflict, but not universally appli- cable. Europe came up with an international order that is highly success- ful when not challenged by powerful external players, but unlikely to be- come a global norm. Suddenly Europeans realised they could not take peace for granted any more. They could not rely on international treaties or international institutions to protect the borders of their states. And they were shocked to discover that economic interdependence turns out to be rather a source of insecurity than of security. What till yesterday was Europe’s universalism today looks like Europe’s exceptionalism.
1.3 R
USSIA’
SR
EVOLT AGAINSTG
LOBALISATIONIn a September 2014 speech at the UNGA Russia’s foreign minister Ser- gey Lavrov called on the United Nations to agree upon a declaration “on the inadmissibility of the interference into domestic affairs of sovereign states and non-recognition of coup d’état as a method of the change of power” (Lavrov 2014).
Lavrov’s speech is a powerful demonstration that instability within states, rather than rivalry between states, is the leading cause of inter- national crises today. The behaviour of the most influential global actors is shaped less by their strategic geopolitical ambitions than by their ef- forts to manage a swelling domestic backlash against globalisation. Con- demning “foreign interference” in other countries’ domestic politics, Lavrov addressed the fears of Western-backed “colour” revolutions in authoritarian states like China or Iran, but also to the West’s growing
concern about support for militant Islam by countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In his classical book Revolution and War American scholar Stephen Walt argues that revolutions intensify security competition and increase the probability of war by altering each side’s perceptions of the balance of threats (Walt 1996).
The end of power, rather than the shift of power, explains the emer- gence of the new global disorder. “In the twenty-first century,” Moisés Naím writes, “power is easier to get, harder to use, and easier to lose”
(Naím 2013:2). What we witness is the increased ability of the weaker party to inflict casualties on its opponent. Political instability within states has become the common feature of both democratic and non- democratic regimes. In the five years elapsed since the Great Recession of 2008 mass political protests have shaken more than seventy coun- tries in the world. Sometimes the protests have succeeded in toppling authoritarian governments; most of the times they have succeeded in making such governments’ life much harder. Global public opinion as a rule has taken the side of anti-establishment protesters. The Kremlin’s take of these protest movements is that they are the direct result of the unwillingness of the architects of the post-Cold War order to put sover- eignty at the centre of international politics. What Russia wants from the international community is an international order that discourages peo- ple from marching on the streets against their own government. Certain- ly, what Moscow expects when people take to the streets is that the in- ternational community takes the side of the government in power re- gardless of its democratic record. The Kremlin’s problem is that such a proposition is simply impossible to hold in a deeply interconnected world. The West’s problem is that it has underestimated the risks com- ing out of such an interconnected world.
In the post-Cold War period Europe has proved to be incapable of reading Moscow’s signals correctly. Its inability to appreciate the inten- sity of Russia’s resentment about the European order is rooted in the European Union’s proclivity to think of Russian-European relations after the Cold War as a win-win game and to see the Union itself as a benevo- lent power that no reasonable actor could view as a threat. Until the an- nexation of Crimea, the West assumed that Russia could only lose by challenging the international order and especially by questioning the in-
violability of internationally recognised borders on which control of its own vulnerable south-eastern flank seemingly depends. European lead- ers persuaded themselves that, behind closed doors, what Russia really feared were China and the spread of radical Islam, and that Russia’s end- less complaints about NATO’s enlargement or America’s anti-missile de- fence system in Europe were simply a form of popular entertainment aimed at a domestic audience for television news. The problem is, these Western assumptions were wrong.
European leaders and European publics fell victim of their cartoon vision of the nature and capacity of President Vladimir Putin’s clique.
The stories of pervasive corruption and cynicism coming from Russia made them believe that the Russian elite was interested only in money and it would do nothing that could threaten its business interests. Rus- sian leaders were crooks, but profit-minded crooks. This vision of Putin’s Russia as “Russia Inc.” has turned out to be wrong. Russian elites are greedy and corrupt but they also dream about Greater Russia and they want Russia’s triumphant return on the global stage. “Putin is a So- viet person,” wrote Putin’s former advisor Gleb Pavlovsky, “who set himself the task of revanche, not in a stupid, military sense, but in a his- torical sense” (Pavlovsky 2014:57).
After 1989 Russia suffered the double humiliation of being a loser in a world that was advertised as a world without losers. In 1989 only 13 percent of Russians believed that their country had external enemies;
this view is now shared by 78 percent of Russian respondents. What Eu- ropean leaders failed to realise was that, while very few Russians longed for a return to Soviet communism, a majority was nostalgic for the Sovi- et Union’s status as a superpower, a state that could be respected. And while Russians for all this period have tended to view the European Un- ion as a reasonable and agreeable power, Russian elites have at the same time viewed European foreign policy simply as an instrument of America’s strategy to preserve its hegemony in the region. The crisis in Ukraine and the Kremlin’s state propaganda related to it have succeeded to make the view of the elite the view of the public. According to the in- dependent Levada Center (2014), in November 2014 only 26 percent of Russians had positive view of the European Union.
Thus, building a civilisational state, a castle identity – a hard-shell
state that can be integrated into the global economy only if its domestic politics is sealed off from external influences – has been the principal goal of Putin’s state-building project ever since he acceded to power in 2000.
In 1993 the Russian classicist and amateur grand strategist, Vadim Tsymburskiy, published an influential article titled The Island of Russia. Russia’s geopolitical destiny, he argued, was as an island that could best survive by cutting itself off from Europe. In his view, Russia had to break with the legacy of its “three European centuries” and realise that its at- tempt either to copy Europe (which is how he sees Tsarist imperialism) or to join Europe will inevitably culminate in tragedy. At a time when globalisation was destabilising the world, he wrote, Russia’s only viable option was to focus on the country’s Far East and on its internal devel- opment. Russia was too weak and fragmented internally to succeed in a globalised world (Tsymburskiy 1993).
Putin’s actions resemble 19th century Russian imperial politics. But in reality they are part of a worldwide 21st century revolt against glob- alisation. Putin defines the threat coming from the West as a threat to Russia’s political identity rather than a threat to Russia’s territorial in- tegrity.
Putin’s improvised Ukrainian gambit is better explained by his fear of regime change through what he sees as remote-controlled street protest than by his fear of NATO’s expansion. “Occupy Crimea” was a logical re- sponse to Moscow’s protesters’ “Occupy Abai” movement.1 It is the Kremlin’s domestic politics and not Russia’s security calculations that explain best Moscow’s foreign policy revisionism. Putin’s contract with the Russian society based on constantly improving the material wellbe- ing of the average Russian in exchange for citizens’ withdrawal from politics collapsed during the Moscow’s 2012 “winter of discontent.”
Russia’s economy was in stagnation while Russian society mobilised.
From the Kremlin’s perspective, the heart of the regime’s vulnerabil- ity lies in the Russian elite’s cultural and financial dependence on the
1 Named after the Kazakh poet Abai Kunanbayev’s statue in front of which protesters held public lectures during the 2012 anti-Putin demonstrations.
West. This is why nationalisation of the country’s elites’ business inter- ests became Putin’s major objective. The open confrontation with the West was a strategy adopted well before the fall of Ukraine’s pro- Russian President Viktor Yanukovych – whose flight from Kiev precipi- tated the invasion of Crimea. It was meant to increase Russia’s econom- ic, political and cultural isolation from the West. Putin’s war on gays and the annexation of Crimea are two pages taken from the same playbook.
Putin has conceptualised the very existence of the post-Cold War Euro- pean order as a threat to Russia’s strategic interests.2
1.4 S
ANCTIONS AND THEP
ARADOX OFR
USSIA’
SI
SOLATIONISMIn an 8 January 1962 speech that remained secret for over forty years, then Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev announced to his colleagues in the Politburo that the Soviets were so thoroughly outmatched in the su- perpower struggle with America that Moscow’s only option was to seize the initiative in international affairs. Some decades hence future histori- ans may unearth a similar secret speech delivered to his inner circle by President Putin in February 2014, that is, at the moment when he decid- ed to invade Crimea in order to disguise the fact that Russia had lost Ukraine and failed to compete economically with the West.
The paradox of Russia’s isolationism is that although the Kremlin wants to increase Russia’s insulation, it lacks the capacity to do. In the early 1960s, having decided to cut the GDR off from the West, the Sovi-
2 We can reflect upon historical parallels when it comes to the anti-cosmopolitan up- rising of the Russian rulers. Whenever Russia opens itself to the world, there may be a point where panic sets in and the country’s authoritarian leaders hysterically reverse course, returning to isolationism with a vengeance. Something of this sort happened af- ter Russia’s victory over French Emperor Napoleon in the early 19th century. In 1946 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin launched his infamous campaign against cosmopolitanism, and hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were sent to the camps because the regime feared that they had seen too much of Europe. Could we not be witnessing something similar, though much less murderous, today?
ets erected a wall through the centre of Berlin. Putin does not have the capacity to do anything of the sort. He cannot stop trading with the world and he lacks an ideology capable of convincing the Russians that, in their glorious isolation, they will own the future. So what has he done? Putin’s judo logic is in display here. In analysing the Russian pres- ident’s way of thinking, Pavlovsky (2014:55) insists that Putin is unwill- ing to fight global trends and use up his resources. He believes that. “You have to take the resources of the trend and achieve what you want with them.” The Kremlin has manufactured a crisis so that it is now Kiev that hopes to build a wall along the Russian border, a crisis that allowed him to effectively discipline his “offshore elites.” Russian officials who initial- ly disobeyed their president’s assets repatriation directives and kept their money in Western banks are now sending the money back home, fearing Western sanctions. And, not accidentally, the business that has suffered most from the quasi-war in eastern Ukraine has been Russia’s tourist industry. This summer, 30 percent fewer Russian tourists went to Europe than in 2013.
The paradox of this is that the West has become an accomplice in Putin’s effort to disconnect Russia from the world. The key question re- garding the West’s response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine is whether economic sanctions make sense in light of Putin’s strategy to unravel the connections that, for the past quarter century, Russia’s economic elites have woven with the West, or whether instead sanctions are allowing Putin to do what he cannot achieve on his own, that is, re-orienting Rus- sia’s elites – and the whole country – away from Europe.
Faced with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and de-stabilisation of south-eastern Ukraine, the West had no other alternative but to react forcefully and make Russia pay a price. The Western leaders were well aware that the Kremlin’s game of escalation and de-escalation in the Donbas created the risk of turning the European Union into the prover- bial frog that, placed in a pot of cold water that is gradually heated, nev- er realises the danger it is in and ends up boiled alive. At the same time it was clear from the very beginning that the West is not ready and will- ing to use military force to change Russia’s aggressive behaviour in Ukraine and that it could not place its hopes in an anti-government mo- bilisation in Russia. On the contrary, in the short term Russian public
opinion is an obstacle to find an accommodation as the contest in Ukraine has been described by the media as a struggle so vital to Russia that it cannot cede an inch of ground. The West has thus good reasons to be concerned about not only Putin’s Russia, but also post-Putin’s Russia.
Sanctions were the West’s only possible weapon. They are intended as a nonviolent foreign policy alternative to military intervention. They signal the resolve of the Western not to accept a situation they strongly disapprove of and to make Russia pay the price for having engendered it. They also try to impress on the sanctioned country how dependent it is on those who impose sanctions. But sanctions are also clumsy tools that are hard to design, difficult to implement and sometimes impossible to enforce. Jeremy Shapiro, an expert at the Brookings Institution and a former member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, was right to stress that “Russia is bigger than all of our previous sanction targets put together. It has a lot more links with the world economy than any other country [sanctioned] in the past” (quoted in Lake 2014). It is also well positioned to survive a relative short period of sanctions be- cause of its considerable foreign currency reserves.
EU sanctions have become a recurrent practice since a decision in early 1982 that partially restricted trade with the Soviet Union to pro- test against its role in the crackdown of the Solidarity movement in Po- land. But sanctions were not a classical Cold War weapon. The European Community (forebear of the Union) used sanctions very rarely in the 1980s. The Soviet system was too self-sufficient in order to be seriously damaged by sanctions. The Balkan triggered more frequent and more systematic use of the instrument in the 1990s. Ever since the frequency of the use of sanctions has fluctuated, but beginning in 2010 EU sanc- tioning activity has really taken off. From 2010 to 2011 the number of relevant decisions more than trebled, jumping from 22 to 69, most of them concerning measures against Libya, Iran, and Syria (Lehne 2012).
Sanctions are demonstration of power in the absence of military force.
They are like those weapons from science fiction movies that do not kill the enemy but simply sends him to sleep. However, the paradox of sanc- tions is that they work due to economic interdependence but they also undermine it. They reveal the West’s dominant position in the interna- tional order but they also threaten this dominance by making other
players fear Western hegemony and give them incentive to de-globalise.
Thus, in judging the impact of the sanctions we should be interested not only in how successful they are to hurt Russia but how they influence the policies of the non-Western powers.
The paradox of Russian isolationism is that sanctions can be effec- tive in damaging Russia’s economy while at the same time they may fa- cilitate Putin’s plans for limiting Russia’s exposure to the West. Certain- ly they have been effective, probably far more effective than anyone an- ticipated. They have been estimated to have cost Russia 1-1.5 percent of GDP in 2014, with some experts regarding them as an even bigger threat than falling oil prices. Russian currency reserves – raided to prop up the falling rouble – are at a four-year low after dropping 57 billion dollars in 2014. In early October last year they oscillated around 455 billion dollars. Capital outflow jumped to 74 billion dollars in the first six months of 2014. Both the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have recently revised their 2015 growth forecasts for Russia downwards.
Whether or not sanctions are allowed to expire in 2015, the resulting erosion in investor confidence, a general perception of higher risk of fi- nancing Russian banks, increased capital flights and weaker economic growth are likely to be painful for Moscow. But what about the unin- tended consequences?
In a speech to the Russian National Security Council, Putin declared his government’s readiness to build a backup system to keep websites in the Russian domains – those ending in .ru and .rf – online in a national emergency. In other words, the Kremlin is ready to nationalise the In- ternet. The Duma, Russia’s parliament, also voted a law that forbids for- eign companies to be majority stakeholders in Russian media. In addi- tion, sanctions have also marginalised pro-Western members of Russia’s elites. “You [in the West] reason that the sanctions will split the elite and force Putin to change course, but that’s not what is happening,” a bil- lionaire investor told the Financial Times. “On the contrary, you are de- stroying those in Russia who are friends of the West. The siloviki [“the heavies”, meant are Putin’s supporters particularly in the security ser- vices and the bureaucracy] have been strengthened more than ever be- fore” (quoted in Hille 2014). Sanctions also assist Putin in his strategy to
re-orient Russia’s trade away from the West. Silvia Merler has shown that while foreign direct investment (FDI) flows from Europe to Russia shrank significantly between late 2013 and early 2014, FDI flows from Asia – mostly from China – picked up to high levels during the same pe- riod and literally exploded in the first quarter of 2014. During the first three months of 2014, European net FDI inflows to Russia amounted to 2.9 billion dollars (2 billion of which coming from the euro area), i.e.
down 63 percent year on year. Asian net FDI flows to Russia were in- stead 1.2 billion dollars (1 billion of which coming from China), i.e. up 560 percent year on year (Merler 2014). And this is not the only sign suggesting that Russia might have been succeeding in re-orienting the geography of its capital flows over the latest months.
1.5 D
ANCING WITH THEB
EARIn many respects, the current situation resembles the East-West crisis in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then like now mass protest move- ments and economic crisis shook both East and West. In the 1960s do- mestic political unrest initially provoked more aggressive foreign policy urging the United States to escalate its involvement in Vietnam and the Soviet Union to invade Czechoslovakia. But with the passing of time this strategy failed both in the East and the West and political leaders veered towards a policy of détente. To many contemporaries détente looked as appeasement to Soviet policies of interference in Eastern Eu- rope, but over time this same policy has been recognised as an effective instrument in eroding the foundations of Soviet control over Eastern Europe.
What makes Russia different than the other emerging powers is that it is more inclined than any other power not to think in economic terms.
The fact that Russia is economically uncompetitive while at the same time militarily powerful3 in combination with the natural resources-
3 It is planned that till 2020 Russian armed forces will modernize 70 percent of their armament.
dependent nature of its economy makes Russia more prone to political hazards than emerging powers.
In the last months Western policymakers have been preoccupied about how to press Russia to change its policies in Ukraine and how to protect the territorial integrity and political stability of EU member states bordering Russia. Responding to Russia’s propaganda war against
“the decadent Europe” has been another concern. But not much thought have been put on how re-engagement with Russia could take place if Russia decided to play a more constructive role in Ukraine.
Return to business as usual is not an option nether for the West nor for Russia. Putin’s strategy does not envision return to the post-Cold War sta- tus quo. The West cannot close its eyes to Putin’s blunt violation of inter- national law. So, what is the way out of the current policy paralysis?
Lifting sanctions is not a strategy. It could only be an element of a strategy. Keeping sanctions forever is not a strategy either. Europe’s re- engagement with Russia makes sense only if Europe forces Russia to think in economic terms. Another paradox of the current situation – perhaps the most ironic – is that the best hope for the Europeanisation of Russia is support for Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), the very pro- ject Putin desperately wanted Ukraine to be part of. In an insightful pa- per, Paris-based analyst Nicu Popescu provides insightful analysis of the internal contradictions of Moscow’s project for re-integrating the post- Soviet space (Popescu 2014). And powerfully contends that the EEU is a flawed integration project. Russia’s ambition to form the Eurasian Eco- nomic Union resembles an ill-concealed attempt to restore the Soviet Union. While the European Union was an enterprise of several European states quite similar in size, it is obvious that Moscow will dominate the Eurasian Economic Union (Russia will represent 90 percent of the GDP of the EEU) and that it will function as Russia’s sphere of influence.
Economists have figured out that the positive effect of this regional inte- gration will be minimal, because “in the two decades following the dis- solution of the USSR, Russia’s weight and importance as a trading part- ner for most post-Soviet states [have] drastically declined. […] As a re- sult, the EU and China are bigger trading partners than Russia for every post-Soviet country except Belarus and Uzbekistan” (Popescu 2014:11).
The prospect of free movement of labour is probably the single most at-
tractive feature of the Eurasian Economic Union from the point of view of most post-Soviet states. The EEU would be a bloc of authoritarian re- gimes whose goal is to strengthen their own hold on power. What is common between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan (currently the three EEU member states) is strong leaders, weak institutions and no legiti- mate mechanism for succession. All these arguments are fair and cor- rect. Eurasian integration is a flawed project and this flawed project is the West’s best chance to keep Russia’s interdependence with the Euro- pean Union while allowing the latter to preserve its post-modern nature.
Engagement with the EEU (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and in future probably Armenia and Kyrgyzstan) means that the European Union rec- ognises Russia’s right to have an integration process of its own. It also means that at this moment the Union recognises the borders of the EEU as the borders of its own integration project. But while EU acceptance of the EEU as a trading partner creates some administrative difficulties for Brussels and it looks like a Moscow’s success, it offers real opportuni- ties. It drives the competition between Russia and the West into the economic field, where Russia cannot win.
Negotiating with the Eurasian Economic Union will reduce some of the advantages that Russia enjoys in its current negotiation forums with the European Union. Brussels will increase its leverage playing on the different views between EEU member states. Kazakhstan’s and Belarus’s manoeuvrings after Russia’s annexation of Crimea are best illustrations that Astana and Minsk are reluctant vassals of the Kremlin. The recogni- tion of the Eurasian Economic Union will weaken Putin’s resolve to think in terms of Russia’s world and thus will reduce the pressure on Russian minorities abroad. The Russian minority-cantered foreign poli- cy is a threat for the Baltic states but also for Kazkhstan. And last but not least, EU leaders will not need to negotiate with Putin. What makes the Eurasian Economic Union the best policy to resist Russia’s suicidal isola- tionism is the fact that unlike the notion of Russia’s world, the EEU is or- ganised around the idea of economic interdependence and it promotes certain type of constraint on Russia’s policy. It helps liberal economists to re-capture some initiative (and influence) and it presents the only available system of constrains when it comes to Kremlin’s power.
“When you dance with the bear,” observed late Robert Strauss, an
American politician who had a firsthand experience with East-West pol- icies in the 1960s and 1970s, “you don’t quit when you’re tired; you quit when the bear is tired” (quoted in Bobbitt 2014). What he actually meant is that you quit “when you have succeeded to exhaust the bear.”
And this is exactly what the EU should do.
Deterrence in the New European Security Context
Christopher Chivvis
2.1 T
HEN
EWC
ONFLICT WITHR
USSIARussia’s annexation of Crimea and subsequent invasion of south-eastern Ukraine is unquestionably the most serious crisis in European security since the end of the Cold War, and possibly since the pre-détente era. It upends multiple assumptions that have underpinned American and al- lied foreign and security policy in Europe since the 1990s. Most im- portantly, it overturns the assumption that while Russia had the capabil- ity to alter borders in Europe by force, it did not intend to, and hence was a benign and even a pro-status quo power. This is no longer the case and the United States (US), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Russia are now clearly headed toward a new phase in their relation- ship, one characterised by more conflict and less cooperation than was the case in the first quarter century after the end of the Cold War.
Some would thus argue that we are either facing or at risk of a new Cold War (Legvold 2014, Kashin 2014, Arbatov 2014). Conceptually, the Cold War lens is misleading, however.1 The dynamics of the emerging new relationship between the United States, Europe and Russia will be similar to the Cold War in some ways, but the coming conflict is not the same thing. The nature of today’s conflict, the context in which it is play- ing out, and its relative importance in the broader international system
1 Some analysts have thus preferred the term “cool war.” For this argument in the Asian context, see Davis and Wilson 2011.
differentiate it markedly from the stark East-West standoff that framed international politics in the forty years after the Second World War (WWII).
Like the Cold War, today’s clash has ideological as well as geopolitical dimensions. Ideologically, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims to stand for a conservative authoritarianism grounded in family values and the teachings of today’s Russian Orthodox Church. Putin casts his con- servatism as an alternative to Western European liberal democracy, which he portrays as decadent, immoral, and ill-suited for Russian and many other societies. He clearly presents his ideology as an alternative to the liberal and social-democratic political values for which the United States and Europe have stood since the end of WWII.
Despite these differences, this ideological contrast is not so sharp as during the Cold War, when Russian official rhetoric often portrayed the very existence of Western capitalism as a de facto threat to the Soviet Union. Russia today makes no such claims. Soviet leaders may eventual- ly have come to a similar view regarding the compatibility of com- munism and capitalism, but their rhetoric, coupled with the dogma that the capitalist system was destined to collapse of its own internal weak- nesses, heightened overall East-West tensions during the Cold War. Nor does Putinism shape Russian foreign policy to the same extent com- munism shaped Soviet foreign policy. For example, there is no equiva- lent to the Third International, and little support for Putinist revolt in the developing world – the violent radicalism of the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) appears much more popular. Importantly, despite its criticisms of Western mores, the Kremlin has not gone so far as to claim that its political system is fundamentally incompatible with the Western political systems. Putin disparages those systems but does not advocate their overthrow. Even as Russia prefers to keep liberal democracy away from its doorstep in Ukraine, it seeks to trade and coexist with western Europe.
On a geopolitical level, today’s conflict is reminiscent of the Cold War, but also not identical. The Cold War broke out over the question of whether or not the countries of Central and Eastern Europe would be democratic after WWII, as the West believed had been agreed at the US- British-Soviet summit in Yalta, or whether they would be governed by
puppets of the Kremlin, as Soviet leader Joseph Stalin felt was necessary for the security of the Soviet Union. In contrast, the root of the current conflict is whether or not Russia has a privileged sphere of interests in the regions along its current borders and a corresponding right to dom- inate weaker countries if their domestic or foreign policies run counter to what Russia sees as its interests. Although both the Cold War and the today’s conflict are about Russia’s sphere of influence, the countries immediately affected are clearly not the same.
There are also important distinctions in the broader political and mil- itary context in which renewed tension with Russia will unfold. The mil- itary geography is starkly different from the Cold War: Russian armies are no longer in Central Europe and, indeed, are unlikely ever to be again. The Russian military is meanwhile in the process of deep reform designed to transform it from a capability for large-scale ground-war in Europe to a smaller, faster force that can intervene rapidly on the Rus- sian periphery (Gorenburg et al 2012). Russia’s military transformation has been slow, the Russian military remains weak and antiquated when compared with NATO’s combined strength for large-scale conventional war. The Russian military no longer poses a threat to Europe anywhere close to the scale of the threat posed in Soviet times, when it, rather than the West, was thought to have the conventional edge. Even if they re- main relevant, nuclear arms have also been greatly reduced in number from Cold War levels, the size of NATO forces in Europe has declined, and the capabilities of those forces have shifted away from a central fo- cus on large-scale ground operations at the division level.
Today’s international system is also far more integrated and plural- istic than it was during the Cold War. China is a contender for global su- perpower status. North Korea, Iran, and possibly other countries have nuclear weapons programs. ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other Salafi Jihadist groups are likely to remain the leading security threat to the United States and its allies in the next decade. The global economic context is also radically changed. Russia is integrated into global energy, and espe- cially financial markets to an unprecedented degree – even as sanctions distance it from these markets. The physical and virtual integration of societies, and the profusion of weapons technology have spawned ter- rorist threats of a kind unknown during the Cold War.
For many reasons, therefore, today’s conflict with Russia will never have the central importance that the East-West conflict did during the Cold War. In Washington, especially, concern about Russian revanchism will compete for resources and attention along with a minimum of two other major concerns, the rise of China and the chaotic and dangerous evolution of the Middle East. The United States will thus look to its Eu- ropean allies and partners increasingly for support in addressing the de- terioration of security in Europe.
Moreover, the global context means that the United States and Eu- rope may sometimes be pulled between the need to deter and contain Russia on the one hand and the desire to cooperate with it on the other – although the desire to cooperate with Russia, in Washington at least, has been much diminished by the events in Ukraine. The new global context also creates mutual vulnerabilities that should serve both as checks and as levers against rapid escalation, dampening conflict, and, hopefully, encouraging sustained engagement, communication and measured poli- cies on all sides. Together, these realities will sometimes make it hard for the United States to pursue a consistent, calibrated strategy toward Russia. It will be similarly difficult for Europe to do so.
2.2 G
EOPOLITICAL ANDI
DEOLOGICALD
RIVERS OFC
ONFLICTIf the new conflict with Russia is not a return to the Cold War, it is seri- ous in other ways. Putin’s actions in Ukraine, especially against the backdrop of the 2008 Russia-Georgia War, have opened a Pandora’s box of problems across Central and Eastern Europe, where the political and economic accomplishments of the post-Cold War era are most endan- gered. When coupled with the possibility that Russia could be seeking to redeploy intermediate range missiles that would threaten Europe, this situation should be unnerving for defenders of NATO and the European Union (EU) alike. It should be especially unnerving given that Europe is currently fragmented on multiple levels, distracted by economic issues, and generally lacking self-confidence (Adebahr 2014). The situation should disturb anyone who believes that Europe’s post-WWII evolution
is a cornerstone of the contemporary global order, which has allowed liberal democracy to flourish under the rule of law.
Developing strategies to deal with this problem requires first an ef- fort to understand its basic nature. Russia’s claim to a privileged sphere that includes Ukraine and other nations obviously predates President Putin. Indeed, it is a theme in Russian official documents from the im- mediate time of the 1993 Foreign Policy Concept (Donaldson and Nogee 2009:114-115). Historically, Russia’s vastness has contributed to en- demic insecurity. Because it is too large to integrate easily into the West European system it has often been at risk of invasion from a more de- veloped Europe. At the same time, vastness makes internal governance difficult and also means that Russia has many potential enemies on its border. This fact has encouraged Russia to dominate its borderlands both to create a buffer against European incursion and in an effort to protect itself against incursions from these borderlands themselves (Trenin 2011:23). Hence, whereas the British and French empires at their height were far-flung, the 19th century Russian empire was right on Russia’s own doorstep. In a certain sense, Russia did not so much have an empire as it was an empire. Russia’s post-Cold War loss of terri- tory eliminated great swathes of the buffer that it enjoyed under the So- viet Union and in the century before the First World War (WWI). Only in the years immediately following the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which the newly formed Bolshevik government accepted in order to end Rus- sian involvement in WWI and complete the takeover of power over Tsarist Russia, was Moscow’s influence over the countries on its borders shrunk to the degree it was after the end of the Cold War.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, Russian objections to NATO enlargement toward its borders, as well as statements regarding Russian privileges in its near-abroad, have been a recurring feature of Moscow’s post-Cold War foreign policy position. The tussle with Ukraine over Crimea dates to the early 1990s, when Russian-backed Crimean politicians such as Yuriy Meshkov agitated for Crimean separatism. Nevertheless, if Rus- sia’s desire to control its periphery is longstanding, it reached a new height under President Putin, whose project for a Eurasian Union (now re-christened Eurasian Economic Union) is an institutional embodiment of a long-standing Russian desire to dominate.
What has changed in the last decade is both the intensity of what Russia views as encroachment on its territory as well as Russia’s evalu- ation of its own capability to assert its rights against these countries. In the 1990s Russia was in a state of chaos, reeling from the loss of its em- pire and the collapse of the ideological system that had guided it for seventy years. In the first decade of the 21st century, however, the Rus- sian economy began to recover. The relative strength of Europe and the United States meanwhile appeared in decline as economic troubles plagued Europe and the United States expended vast resources for little apparent gain in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Russia-Georgia War of 2008 was the first indication of this willingness to pursue a re- gional agenda with military power. Russia’s willingness not only to an- nex Crimea, but also to invade Ukraine in August 2014, affirms that Russian resolve.
The conflict is thus in significant part geopolitical in nature. Never- theless, geopolitical perspectives can easily be taken to extremes. For example, academics who view the conflict largely through the geopoliti- cal lens are prone to misread the role NATO and EU enlargement have played in creating the current crisis.2 Historians may look back someday on the enlargement of the Euro-Atlantic security institutions as im- portant to the conflict, but it is unlikely they will view it as the sole or even the most important factor. At least as important for the current conflict are the failures of the reform and transition process in the 1990s, and the fact that Russia is a petro-state, which makes it prone to authoritarianism, and now under a leader whose formative experiences were in the Committee for State Security (KGB).3
Ultimately, ideology, as much as geopolitics, is driving the current conflict. The current Russian leadership is threatened by the possibility that countries like Ukraine could take steps toward the European Union because they believe that the import of EU institutions and norms – spe- cifically, pluralistic society and the rule of law – will diminish their abil-
2 They also fail to assess the benefits of enlargement for the countries that experi- enced it. See Mearsheimer 2014.
3 On Putin’s personality and its impact on Russia’s foreign policy see Hill and Gaddy 2013, Gessen 2012.
